While a student at Balmain High School in Sydney, Stoneking stumbled across some of his father's country blues tapes and was soon well under the spell of 1920s and 1930s blues artists like Blind Willie McTell, Memphis Minnie, Leroy Carr, Big Bill Broonzy, and others, a genre and era that were to form the backbone of his consequent creative vision. Moving to Melbourne in 1997, Stoneking began playing as a solo blues artist, privately releasing an album of covers entitled C.W.